DalyDose of…2 Losses

I love winning….I really do. Even more than that I hate losing. I can be way overly competitive and I know that about myself which is why I take the chill approach to my co-ed 7 on 7 soccer league. We haven’t had that many wins, which was the reason that I wrote a blog entry when we won our first game. Good times.

We’ve lost our last two games in a row. Admittedly, this information by itself isn’t noteworthy considering our record, but no games (or losses) are the same and there is much to learn from each. There’s probably some funny in there too, so let’s start looking.

May 11, 2010

This loss stung because I think we actually loss to an inferior team. The first half was a 0-0 tie that saw much of the action with us in the offensive zone, pressing the action. It was as exciting as soccer can be without actually scoring.

Side note: I’m trying to figure out why we don’t have any “fans” out there watching us. Win or lose we ARE entertaining.

In the second half, I think a few things happened that affected the outcome of the game:

Our girls didn’t have any subs and I think the other team was fresher

We got a little confident after pressing the action in the 1st half

This was a “nice” team: no dirty players, no loudmouths. We didn’t get pissed off and I think we don’t play as hard unless we have a little hate going on.

We also had a goal disallowed. Booooooooo!

At the end of the game I was playing sweeper (last line of defens)…we were down 1-0 and the ref told me we had less than 3 minutes left, so I pressed up to give us a more offensive look. A ball did go over my head with about a minute left so we lost 2-0. Some of my teammates gave me some grief, but I’d probably do the same thing again. I mean if we played safe with that amount of time left we were STILL going to lose…it’s like pulling the goalie in hockey. That’s what happens when a forward is playing defense anyway. Like my teammate Rob said earlier when I was on defense and make a risky move “you’re like a heart attack waiting to happen”. Nice.

*BESIDES – like I said “We are called the ‘Mutt Sluts” and sluts don’t play defense…they SCORE! 🙂

Important note: we had a teammate go down. Lindsay injured her knee a bit. Today’s update is that is is likely a strain vs. a tear. PHEW! Can’t have the legend out for too long.

So yeah, this was a loss, but there are hints of hope. We controlled the ball in the first half. We talked and made plays. Some of our less experienced players are improving by leaps and bounds and even offering prescriptions for fixing the team. Of course, NO ONE is doing JOB#1 – which is recruiting single girls from the other team to go to our sponsor bar with us after. AGAIN, I defer to the team name and implore my teammates to live up to the hype!!

May 3, 2010

This game was out of hand. Remember above where I called the team “nice”? Well….none of that going on here. This was a team of…uh…(censored)!!!

We played hard, but the trash talking and the hard fouls were out of control. Isn’t this where the refs are supposed to earn their big bucks?

Some of the best lines were put out there by me and my teammates. Things were said like:

Dude…seriously, this isn’t the World Cup.

Are you really that upset about a co-ed, recreational league game?

I don’t wanna focus too much on this game since I wanna be a positive force of…uh…positivity? Anyway, all of this sports talk has got my testosterone worked up, I’ll have to go watch and episode of Parenthood on Hulu to bring me back to Zen.